


This is how it was supposed to go

by HiiighNooon



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Consecuted Caleb Widogast, Found Family, Gen, Spoilers through episode 100, no ships just cause that's not the tone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27944246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiiighNooon/pseuds/HiiighNooon
Summary: This is how it was supposed to go. When Bren Aldric Ermendrud was fifteen, his dreams changed. Landscapes and faces he’d never met, worries and anxieties not his own. A city of eternal night, filled with drow, bugbears, goblins and more, the sorts of things his father had told him about in stories of The Far Off.Instead, when Bren was fourteen, he drew the eye of a mage from the Solstrice Academy.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	This is how it was supposed to go

This is how it was supposed to go. 

When Bren Aldric Ermendrud turns fifteen, his dreams  _ changed _ . Landscapes and faces he’d never met, worries and anxieties not his own. Laughter and jokes that bubbled into his day to day. Inside jokes he would begin to tell, then wave off his mother’s confusion with he couldn’t explain it. He dreamt of a city of eternal night, filled with drow, bugbears, goblins and more, the sorts of things his father had told him about in stories of The Far Off Enemy. Bren did not see them as the vile things they’d been painted, but dreamt of smiling faces, burnt bread, parents soothing a child. People, snippets, as common as those in the Zemni fields. 

In time he began to string them together, a story, a life of someone else he was watching out of order. One day the smiling drow he was playing with was full grown, decades passing, a week later they were children again. Not all of it was kind, as not all of life is. But Bren drank it all in, his fascination with learning wanting to know more about this not-Bren. 

He knew their name wasn’t not-Bren. But while it dropped easily from his lips in dreams, it would take two years to remember it beyond a fleeting thought when waking. When he did, the final piece clicked in place, and soon the line between them disappeared, Bren disappearing into the folds of a mind far older than him.

That is how it was supposed to go. 

Instead, when Bren was fourteen, he drew the eye of a mage from the Solstrice Academy. Not Ikithon, not yet. But it was enough that he sparked the attention, and his potential was seen, along with his two best friends. His parents were delighted, his father congratulating him on finding his own path to serve their country.

He had exactly four dreams before Ikithon ‘found’ him. Before the tests, and the training, and the grooming, and the loss of his parents. 

The first was only a few moments long. Standing in a street, people moving around him, Bren unable to make them out. Couldn’t realize his own features, couldn’t connect his hands were not his own. He could only stare up at the swath of night, thousands of stars that he only could see long after the village had gone to bed, no more torchlight to ruin his vision. Even then, it was rare for there not to be clouds overhead. But here the sky was clear, and it was night, here in what he  _ knew  _ was the middle of the day.   


The second happened months after. Stress was getting to him, the three of them wrung out as they prepared for practical tests. It was no surprise to him that he dreamt of more studying, really. Hunched over in a foreign library, books strewn across the table. This body was older and somehow more exhausted than Bren’s own, eyes sore from squinting at parchment, shoulders aching from hunching over the desk for hours on end, furiously crossing out and rewriting over his own notes. Bren couldn’t say what the writing was, his dream self too deep in thoughts and jargon he couldn’t understand. But he knew it was magic, could see it in the way glyphs changed and interacted, could tell from the snippets and murmuring in the mind. He wasn’t aware of the thoughts of not-Bren, not then, could not know the sight of a half developed spell, dunamancy littering the pages. He may have paid more attention, but all he knew was the ache of his shoulders, the cramping of his hand, and the tightness of his brow. Except, as he started to wake, memory of the dream already fading, he could feel a hand slide over his shoulders. A voice, language unfamiliar, but a tone he’d heard from his parents and friends all too often.  _ It’s late. You should take a break. _

The third was a week before Ithikon singled him, Astrid, and Eodwulf out. He was barely older here, maybe seventeen, perched upon the wall in that same city of night. Laughter hidden behind hands, sticky fingers smooshing across another drow’s mouth in a shushing motion, both trying not to get caught. A cloth full of stolen tarts, someone already calling angrily in the distance. 

Bren knew, he  _ knew _ then that the Kryn were the enemies, went against the Empire and those that oversaw the school, knew he could not trust them. But he was not himself now. Not-Bren did not know these prejudices, didn’t know the confusion Bren would feel upon waking. He only knew the joy in a friend pressed close. Then closer, as sticky fingers became sweet kisses, then open laughter as they ran, scrambling the rest of the way over the wall as the cook rounded the corner. When he woke Bren was panting from an escape he did not make, the taste of mulberries still strong in his mouth. (He did not stop to consider how he even knew what they tasted like, and soon it fell from his mind as he was selected for Better and Brighter things).

The last dream came to him the night before the experiments began. Before residuum was shoved into their veins, used to channel whatever magics Ikithon saw fit, corrupting and destroying the anamnesis. This last one was unlike the rest, much later in life than Bren had ever seen. He was running, from what he couldn’t say, just listening to the pounding rush of  _ must escape must get away _ , clutching the book of notes closer to his chest. He ignored the magic flying his way, could feel the build of ozone in the air, of the weave tightening around him as foreign mages chased after. A familiar hand in the dark, reaching for him, then the two of them teleporting away. Escape, safety, then nothing more as he awoke. 

This is how it was supposed to go. 

Not-Bren would return home to Xhorhas, all the while hoping to find the few others that had been killed when abroad. Chasing rumors of a clue, of more magic, more beacons. He shouldn’t have been there, but they needed someone who knew dunamancy, who was skilled enough to deal against any enemy mages they came across. And he was skilled, as were the knights with him, but in the end the volstrucker were quicker. 

He would return home, and after the initial confusion of “oh Luxon, a human”, he would be welcomed. He would return to his den, to his friends, find them changed and harsher than they were in the two decades of stress from a looming war.  Not-Bren would work, developing magic and weapons, and when a decade later the beacons went missing, and the war bloomed fully, he would never know of another path. He would never know of Caleb, of a goblin tossed in a jail cell, of three strangers counting gold at an inn table, of a circus gone wrong. 

He would never know of the mighty nein, as there would never be a mighty nein. Would never know the joy of seeing his best friend able to return to her family. Would never know what it was like to have a family, not in blood except for that which they all spilt together. Would never know of a sister, of journals strewn about in a bar, hands gesturing wildly. Would never sail the seas, to see his captain grow comfortable within his own skin. Would never know of a firbolg, waiting alone, kind words and all-seeing eyes. Of a not-a-god and his wonderful high priestess, of mischief and hidden dicks that everyone could only love her more for. He would never bond with someone in quiet moments of social awkwardness, the two of them encouraging each other to grow. Would never love someone as fiercely as he would that little goblin girl, then that halfling woman. And he would never know the pain of red eyes, never closing. 

He could never imagine the things he would miss. A cheerful kenku, a tired watchmaster, four-of-a-kind shopkeeps. Would never know the lives he saved, the war he helped stop. He would never know of the serpent sealed beneath the sea, of witches to the north, or a permaheart beating a plane away. He would never know these things.

And of course, he would never know Caleb. Would never know a cat's cradle, or a shattered bathtub, or a nein-sided tower. He would never know the feeling of elbows in your side, snoring in your ear, his family squished together in a dome. Would never know Frumpkin, comfort and kindness after a shattered mind just needed a friend.   


He would only know a city of night, a blooming war, and time magic that couldn't prevent the lives lost. 

That is how it was supposed to go. 

But fortunately, no plan survives first contact with the mighty nein. 

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really write anymore, but I love this fucking family. (And if you've made it this far, you're probably very tired of seeing the word 'would' lmao, sorry)


End file.
